


Half-Life

by Fiona_Fawkes



Series: Retrograde [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Post Reichenbach, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiona_Fawkes/pseuds/Fiona_Fawkes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snapshot of Sherlock’s life living with Mycroft as he recovers from his injuries.  Although this technically takes place prior to the events in Retrograde, I do recommend that you read that story first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Life

**Author's Note:**

> Massive amounts of gratitude to Yaycoffee for all her wonderful assistance writing this series. I never could have done it without you.

. . . . .

The soup was cold.

Not cold like a gazpacho, which is intentionally served just shy of room temperature to develop the flavor of the herbs. No, Sherlock’s soup was cold like it had taken him a frankly appalling twenty minutes to eat a single serving. Sherlock was not terribly hungry to begin with, but the thought of putting another bite of blended mushroom bisque into his mouth left him feeling downright nauseous.

His brother’s housekeeper, Joan, had been making a disproportionate number of soups lately. _It’s chilly out, Mister Holmes. I was thinking perhaps a chowder tonight._ One could only blame the unseasonably cool weather for so much. The soup had too much cream, served with a buttered soft roll and boiled carrots that did nothing to promote his appetite. Soft foods which were easy to chew and swallow. Less likely to make him choke, not that Sherlock had experienced that problem for weeks. He set down his spoon and pushed the bowl aside. Sherlock had read his therapist’s notes, as had his brother, so he knew that Mycroft was well aware of his release of limitations. Whether the persistence of the coddling was due to Mycroft’s hesitance or Joan’s poorly applied concern, he did not know.

Sherlock picked at his roll, pinching off small bites and chewing with meticulous care. His jaw still caused him a bit of discomfort but no longer to the point that it interfered with basic functions. There was no permanent nerve damage as his doctors had initially feared. The pain in the right side of his face when he chewed and spoke was a result of damage to the temporomandibular joint from facial trauma; _from your accident_ , his brother had told him. Sherlock had shown marked improvement over the last few months, and should have been free to eat whatever he wanted, so long as he did so with care.

His name was Sherlock Holmes, and he was staying in the home of his elder brother, Mycroft. Sherlock knows his brother’s name, not because he remembered it, but because it was told to him by a nurse in hospital. Not the first person he saw upon waking from his coma, since the sterile staff of intensive care were efficient to a fault and would emotionlessly interacted with his body, but not him as a person. It was one of the overnight nursing aides who finally took pity on him. She was a sympathetic woman who tried to comfort him in his disoriented state by talking softly and touching his uninjured arm. She kept looking to the door of his private room like she was expecting someone, yet so very patient as Sherlock struggled to communicate around a damaged jaw. 

When the man she identified as his brother arrived, she addressed him as _Sir_ and shuffled out of the private room. Sherlock never learned her name, but two months on and that moment was still burned into his mind. That was the moment when Sherlock realized (remembered?) that he could learn so much more about the man called Mycroft by the way people treated and reacted to him than anyone could ever tell him outright; the man offered so little of himself.

Sherlock never saw that particular nurse again, but he also didn’t spend a lot of time in hospital once he was awake. A young woman in a smart suit organized his transfer to his brother’s home. Sherlock’s first few days of consciousness had seen an endless parade of specialists and caregivers come through his room, but they all told him frustratingly little. The lot of them focused entirely on his physical being, while remaining rather tight-lipped regarding the accident that had brought him there. Sherlock found it endlessly frustrating that he could not remember for himself.

Sherlock dropped the spoon he had been idly playing with (manual dexterity of the fingers of his right hand was still limited, it seemed). As he leant down to retrieve it, he could hear the subtle sounds of his brother’s shoes on the polished hardwood floors. Mycroft entered the dining room, seemingly engrossed in reading a fax while he walked. _His shoes are new, leather soles. Italian in origin. Delivered to the house just yesterday and already they’ve been put into service. Mycroft must be trying to impress someone at work._

“Get dressed, Sherlock,” his brother says, without looking meeting his eye. “There is something I would like to show you.”

Sherlock looks down at the dressing gown haphazardly thrown over the lounge pants and t-shirt he had worn for his morning physio session.

“It is unseasonably chilly out,” his brother prompted with a raised brow. “Try to choose something warm,” he said before folding the paper into thirds and sliding it into his breast pocket, leaving Sherlock to see to himself.

Sherlock was quick to take advantage of the opportunity to leave his meal unfinished. He pushed his chair away from the table with a satisfying scrape against the floor and went up to his room to change.

. . . . .

Sherlock peeled back the fine mesh net, allowing the wig’s curls to spring free. “Is this really necessary?”

“Your therapist recommended you dress in the manner to which you had been accustomed. I commissioned this piece to match the exact hairstyle that you wore prior to your accident. This way, when you look in the mirror, you should see yourself.”

“Call him a psychiatrist, Mycroft. That is his title, after all.” Dr. Miller was a wheezy, middle-aged man who likely took great pride forcing men younger than himself into a hair piece. The man’s comb-over was an obvious denial to acknowledge his own alopecia.

Sherlock looked back into the mirror above the bathroom vanity. His own hair was darker than his brother’s - and twice as thick - just long enough for the tips to begin to curl when wet. Sherlock carded his fingers through the hair at his right temple, where the hair surrounding the laceration to his scalp had been shorn while he was in hospital. A haphazard shave made in the operating theater when emergency surgery had been required to relieve pressure from a bleed within Sherlock’s skull. Later, after he had been transferred out of intensive care, one of the nursing aides had used clippers to trim the rest of his hair to something akin to military standards. “Makes it easier to manage, luv,” she’d said. Easier for her or him, he wasn’t sure, but the pinched look on his brother’s face when he next visited was oddly satisfying for some reason, and Sherlock decided right then that he rather liked the cut. That was the day that Mycroft had announced he had arranged for Sherlock to be transferred into the care of private physicians in his own home.

“There is nothing more that they can do for you in hospital, Sherlock,” his brother had said. “It is time to come home.”

Sherlock’s homecoming had been an awkward one. In hospital, it was expected that everything felt foreign and uncomfortable. Sherlock found it quite disorienting that the feeling did not abate upon coming home, as it were.

Sherlock ran his fingers through the tight curls of the wig, so dark as to almost be black. Human hair, not the kanekalon fibers which were found in most shops. The hair piece had to have been expensive. Sherlock looked back at his mirror image and tried to imagine the face that he saw with dark curls, and found that he could not. Sherlock sighed.

“If you require assistance, I can send Joan up to help you,” Mycroft offered. “She has experience with this sort of thing.”

Sherlock frowned. “Joan wears a wig?”

Mycroft closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “No. Her younger sister underwent chemotherapy two years ago. Joan took several months away from work to look after her. Could you not tell?”

“I’m sure I’ll manage just fine on my own,” Sherlock replied curtly, turning his back on his brother. 

“Very well then,” Mycroft responded, turning to leave. “If you would meet me in my study once you are ready, we can be on our way.”

. . . . .

Sherlock scratched where the wig’s curls tickled the back of his neck. He had met Mycroft in his study and then followed as his brother wordlessly led him down the stairs to the front of the house. Sherlock thought he ought not to mention how he had noticed that Mycroft deliberately slowed his steps on the stairs. His brother seemed to labor under the notion that he was treating Sherlock with no special care, but it was obvious that the man thought Sherlock was something fragile, to be handled delicately. Confirmation, perhaps, that Sherlock could not trust his physiotherapist not to report on his progress and limitations to his brother. How humiliating.

Upon reaching the foyer, Mycroft went into the hall closet, retrieving a heavy coat hanging in a clear plastic bag. “Here we are,” Mycroft said, ripping open the plastic and handing the coat to Sherlock. “It’s an early fall, after all, and the air is quite brisk.”

“You bought me a coat.” Sherlock observed.

“On the contrary,” Mycroft replied, smug. “I simply had your old coat laundered.”

“My coat.” Sherlock said as he eased it over his shoulders. The garment was made of fine charcoal wool, soft to the touch, and very smooth. It was perfectly tailored to Sherlock’s long frame. He fussed with the collar, trying to get it to lay right. He turned the collar up, then folded it back down, buttoned the coat up to his neck before popping the top two back open. 

The smug smile slipped off of his brother’s face. “My apologies. I’m afraid that your scarf was unsalvageable, but I am happy to loan you one of mine,” he said, pulling down a hanger of scarves in a variety of colors.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock replied, grabbing a scarf in a medium blue and wrapping it around his neck with practiced ease. It was his automatic response to anything on which people expected him to have an opinion. He had no way of knowing otherwise.

. . . . .

“Do you know where we are going?” Mycroft inquired conversationally. To a third party observer, the man would appear disinterested in Sherlock’s response, merely attempting to pass the time with idle small talk. Sherlock had learned better by now.

“How could I? You’ve told me nothing of the purpose of this trip.”

The muscles around Mycroft’s eyes tightened as he turned to look out the window. “You could try _deducing_ it.”

That word again. Deduction, and the science thereof. All conversations with Mycroft seemed to come back to that theme. “A pointless exercise. As I have no memory of the area that we pass through I have no information upon which to make such a guess. Do stop your needling. It is tiresome.” Sherlock rested his elbow on the car door, turning his body towards the unfamiliar city that passed them by, effectively ending the conversation.

“As you wish,” Mycroft responded.

Sherlock could see his brother’s posture reflected in the window that kept them separated them from their driver; his shoulders dropped in defeat, his eyes closed. An unguarded emotional tell, the frequency of which had grown as the weeks wore on. The message, though, was clear. Failure; whether Sherlock’s or his own, it did not matter. Although his physical injuries had nearly healed, Sherlock had seen frustratingly little progress when it came to the recovery of his memories. When he chose to acknowledge his psychiatrist’s presence, Sherlock could tell him with great clarity the variety of roses kept in his mother’s garden, or summarize the plot of _Treasure Island_. He had no indication of what he had made of his adult life or how he had spent it. A life half-lived, with no indications of how he should proceed.

Sherlock closed his eyes and let the rest of the trip pass in silence.

. . . . .

The car parked in the shade of a copse of elm trees along the ridge on south side of a stone parish.

“What are we doing here?” Sherlock asked, hand hesitating on the handle of the door.

Mycroft smiled in that placating manner of his that infuriated Sherlock. “Why, jogging your memory, of course.” His expression sobered. “Now, you mustn’t draw attention to yourself. The people we are here to observe must not see you. It is a risk we must not take. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” Sherlock nodded. He really didn’t, but it was far easier to just agree with his brother then to question his motives.

Sherlock got out of the car and stepped a few feet away to stand under one of the trees. It was a sunny day, if a little breezy, and people at the church were unlikely to notice him standing so many meters away, hidden by the shadows. As he watched, a cab pulled into the church parking lot, but instead of parking near the doors, it dropped its charges in the back, near the gates to the cemetery. 

Two people emerged from the car; a middle age man leaned into the door to say something to the cabbie before he offered his elbow to his much older female companion. Mother and son? Mycroft had been stressing the importance to him of interpreting what he observed beyond the superficial. The woman clung to the man’s arm, a bit unsteady on her feet. Perhaps some sort of lower limb injury? More likely the fault of a poor choice of shoes as the heels of her pumps sunk into the soft earth. She had dressed nicely, but made a poor choice in footwear. Either the woman had not been here often, or the two had other plans for the day.

The man, however, was infinitely more interesting. He favored his right leg as he stepped out of the car, but not once he’d offered support to the woman. He wore a short, dark jacket, but no hat or gloves against the cold. The two walked slowly but with purpose, directly to a polished marble headstone without paying the rest of the grounds any mind. They had made this visit before. The ground in front of the stone was slightly raised, although a fine layer of new grass covered the earth. A few months had passed since the burial, but the relationship of the plot’s occupant to the two people was impossible to tell.

The couple talked quietly with each other for a few moments before the woman turned and carefully made her way back towards the waiting cab, giving the man a bit of privacy. He must be closer to the deceased than she. His late spouse, perhaps? The deep lines to his face and his downturned mouth spoke of intense sadness. It was of course impossible for Sherlock to hear what the man said as he stood at the grave, but his body language spoke volumes. Sherlock recognized the man’s deep grief, even from so far away. Empathy was not something that Sherlock had found much occasion to experience recently, but he could not pretend that he is not affected by the pain the other man attempted to hide as he covered his face with his hand.

Sherlock strained for a better look at the man’s face, but the bright sunlight that kept Sherlock hidden also kept the man’s face partially shadowed. Sherlock mentally scrolled through the faces that he could remember: doctors and technicians from the hospital, the nurses and therapists that had seen to his needs in his brother’s home, and the countless suited peons who had come and gone from his brother’s study while Sherlock was supposed to have been sequestered in his room. None of them sparked the odd sense of déjà vu that Sherlock got as he watched the man below him straighten his back and lift his chin, standing at attention before nodding once and executing a precise about face to walk briskly away.

Sherlock was struck with a subtle sensation of familiarity by the sight before him. Did he know this man, or maybe the woman? Someone from before his accident, perhaps? It seems unlikely that they would be family relations as Mycroft had mentioned no one. Sherlock had the odd feeling of wanting to call out to them; to make himself known. He at once wanted to rush after the pair, and yet, something made him stay still. He thought there must be something significant in this. Sherlock pondered his impressions as he watched the man march out of the cemetery to rejoin his companion in a slower walk back to their cab. 

Sherlock was still puzzling at the odd feeling of familiarity when he heard his brother say his name. 

"Anything?" Mycroft prompted from his spot next to the car, a few feet away.

Brotherly concern? Sherlock thought it unlikely, given what he’d learned of the man over the last few months. Something petulant and possessive was welling up in his chest. He felt an overwhelming urge to protect these strangers from his brother and his machinations.

"No," Sherlock lied smoothly and without turning around. "Nothing at all."

Mycroft sighed and turned to climb back into the car. "Very well, then. Let us be on our way."

Sherlock watched the unknown man's back as he retreated. _Perhaps we will meet again,_ Sherlock thought to himself, before turning to rejoin his brother.

. . . . .

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: I've seen many hypothesize that the graveyard scene that closes The Reichenbach Fall would have taken place shortly after Sherlock’s ‘death’ in late June of 2012. I’ve interpreted it differently for the purpose of this story, instead placing it sometime in September. This gives my Sherlock enough time to have achieved sufficient physical recovery to make the trip, and for Mycroft to have noticed stagnation in Sherlock’s mental recovery, thus prompting him to take the considerable risk of taking Sherlock to the cemetery to observe John and Mrs Hudson and ‘jog his memory.’ Also, in canon, John and Mrs Hudson, as well as Sherlock in his iconic Belstaff coat, are dressed quite warmly for June or July. This also gives time for my John to grieve alone in 221B, meet with the executor of Sherlock’s will and take control of his inheritance, decide that he needed to spend some time away from 221B (thus his canon conversation with Mrs Hudson about not going back, not yet) and to start seeing his therapist again (prompting him to visit Sherlock’s grave and say what he never had a chance to). The fax we see Mycroft reading in the opening scene is the surveillance report indicating John and Mrs Hudson’s plans to visit Sherlock’s grave on that day.


End file.
